


soft, salt, on my lips

by afterism



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, a hint of fire!hans but mostly brimstone!hans, deliberate tense changes, demon!Hans, not as much of an AU as you might think, nun!Elsa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:31:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1962108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/pseuds/afterism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her dreams, his teeth are sharp and he's closer than he should be, but neither of them have moved. I can show you how to <i>melt</i>, he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	soft, salt, on my lips

**Author's Note:**

> Partly inspired by this gorgeous comic by 24mango: [one](http://24mango.tumblr.com/post/87503975163/nun-elsa-devil-hans-1) [two](http://24mango.tumblr.com/post/87504327633/nun-elsa-devil-hans-2-0) & [three](http://24mango.tumblr.com/post/87504517598/nun-elsa-devil-hans-3)
> 
> (this fic was previously under the username of animmouse, before I could admit that I really, really loved this ship. just in case anyone's noticed the author name has changed/is wondering where the heck this fic came from.)

He found her in the woods, picking her way through the dirt.

The summer seemed to be endless, everything brown and bone dry, dead leaves and bracken and twigs snapping under her feet as she searched for mushrooms in the crumbling undergrowth. She couldn't remember the last time it rained. The sun against the back of her neck scorched deep into her skin like it was trying to find the ice under it, and burn it out.

There was a breath of wood smoke in the air when she turned, scanning the empty spaces between the bark, and beyond the dip of the hill she could see the white walls through the white trees, the leaves turning to gold coins above her head as every green thing withered. The convent was still too close to do anything about the heat. Every sister had taken a vow of silence, but that didn't mean she could let anyone _see_.

In her hands she had nothing but firewood for the kitchens, and she found herself hesitating - torn between going back to the shade of the walls and going further, on and on until the silence felt like freedom. A single crooked fence post stood just ahead of her, marking a long-forgotten boundary, attached to nothing and so old it was almost part of the forest again.

Her eye caught on something, a hint of white underneath the mulch. She bent down, flicking through the dry leaves, but it was just an old bone hiding in the dirt.

"My lady," he said, the words so sudden and startling that she had nearly broken her vow by accident because no one had called her that in _years_.

For a moment, the first second when she jolted upright and looked at him, she found herself squinting. She couldn't quite remember why - there was nothing dazzling about his dark clothes, or the copper shine on his hair, or dappled sunlight making his pale skin into patchwork - but still, her eyes had hurt, like she'd been staring into a bright light for too long.

He stood a foot beyond the fence post. The ground between them was unmarked and indistinguishable, just dirt and brown leaves. 

He bowed once he had her attention, and then pressed his palms together like a prayer. "I apologise if I startled you," he said, and she kept her jaw still and nodded her head, only taking her eyes off him for a heartbeat.

The forest floor crackled underneath her when she shifted her foot. She didn't know how he could have gotten so close without her hearing something, but there he was, palms still pressed together before he let them drop. His eyes were soft and considering and the sort of green that reminded her of spring, in the same way that summer reminded her of Anna. 

Her tongue was thick in her mouth but she wanted to say something, suddenly, questions lining up in her throat - how he knew who she was, how he got there, how he seemed so unflustered by the heat - but then his gaze flickered, from her loose braid to her hands to the hem of her habit and she almost stumbled back a step. The ice in her fingertips burst like stars and jerked away despite the heat scorching it down, despite there being nothing that _unsettling_ about a stranger considering her. She whipped the twigs she held behind her back, so he wouldn't see the frost suddenly thick along the bark.

She pressed her lips together. Watched how the line of his mouth curled up into a smile, like the edge of a page caught in a flame.

"I can teach you to control it," he said, and everything went still.

(In her dreams, his teeth are sharp and he's closer than he should be, but neither of them have moved. I can show you how to _melt_ , he says.)

 

\---

 

Thirteen years, hidden and hiding. She counted by the seasons, spent more time in the woods than the walls, did not believe in bad omens or the secrets locked in the years skirting through the trees. She pulled her bed away from the wall and crossed off another birthday, scored into the crumbling plaster where no one could see.

The summer solstice burnt on, the sun beating down against the walls like it was trying to find her.

 

\---

 

The words hung between them, like they'd been caught on barbed wire. She hadn't spoken in over a week - just to ask for the key to the library, when it wasn't on its usual hook. Her voice felt like it had been buried deep. 

"Oh! I don't need anything from you, if that's what you're thinking," he said. "I only wish to help."

It wasn't. The _how_ at the start of every question was caught on her tongue, choking her, and then he smiled, lopsided and disarming, and turned his bare palm towards her like he was asking for her hand.

The bells tolled, suddenly, a call to prayer. She nearly dropped the twigs clutched in her hand, brought them down to her side without thinking and now he could _see_. Ice burst along the branches, sealing the bark together as the wood crumbled, and made them worthless for firewood.

She let them drop, shattering on the cracked earth under her feet. He looked at her, waiting.

"How?" she asked. Her first word to anyone outside the convent in years, and he just smiled, and gestured his hand a little nearer.

"Will you let me help you?" he said, and the ice under her skin _burned._

"Yes," Elsa had said. "Please," she said. Finally she saw his teeth, a flash of a smile so genuine it was almost startling.

He straightened up and stepped solidly past the fence post, no pause in his walk as he approached her, and then the bells tolled again - just once, like someone had accidentally slipped the rope - and he didn't try to stop her as she took two, three steps back, whipping her head around to see the convent looming behind her.

"You should go, my lady," he said. It was too late - the gate was far around the wall and she would miss half the service before she was even inside. If she stayed she would miss it entirely, but it wouldn't be the first time. Everyone was growing lax in their duties as the heat ground on, stupefying them with summer.

"Yes," she agreed, and didn't move. He smiled, and stepped closer, and she didn't step back. His eyes were still bright, even in the shadows, like they were reflecting a light she couldn't see.

"May I?" he asked, and took her hand when she offered it. It was awkward in the form but the grace was still there, bone deep. She didn't think she would ever have to do this again, airs and graces, but her body remembered it still. 

He brought the back of her knuckles to his lips, and kissed them. For a moment everything went so still and warm it was like there had never been frost in her veins at all. The sun sank all the way through her, and then he pulled away and let her hand go gently and the sun passed out the other side, leaving nothing but the cold.

"There," he said, and then, "Thank you," and she didn't understand either of them until her hand dropped back to her side and there was a coil of heat in her belly, like a counterbalance for the ice in her bones. 

She had assumed it was a sign. A promise of things to come.

"They'll be wondering where you are," he said, and she had almost protested when there had been the distant crunch of leaves, branches cracking under stress. She twisted around to look, pick out the shifting movement between the trees like tricks of the burning light, and when she turned back he had moved - not back the way he must have come from but behind her, closer to the convent wall.

Every question ( _how_ ) suddenly welled up in her head again. She hadn't noticed them missing. 

"I'll see you soon, Elsa," he said, and she frowned. She didn't know why she had given him her hand, the press of his lips still prickling over her skin. She didn't know why she kept saying yes to him.

"I have to go," she said, and left on quick feet before he could say anything else. She headed for the movement between the trees, picking up brittle twigs as she went, and didn't turn back to see if he was watching. 

 

\---

 

"Where do demons come from?" she had asked one of the older sisters when she was still just a girl, not even in training. She hadn't taken any vows, but unnecessary talking was still frowned upon. It had seemed important, at the time. 

"They're the angels who had all of creation laid out before them and still wanted more. They were cast out," Sister Jenny had said, and walked away before she could ask where they went.

Elsa resisted the urge to call out after her, because that would get her into trouble. She bit her lip, and carried on digging through the soil.

 

\---

 

She woke alone in her little grey bed, staring up at the wall. The first light of the day pushed its way through the trees and flickered across the whitewash, dancing like flames.

There was a key in her door, but it was never turned. There was nothing in her room but her bed and a desk and a chair, rough white walls and a bare wood floor, and no one ever came in without knocking. The door always creaked like a ship in a storm when it opened. 

Prayers, then chores. Her hands were still soft, despite the work, the scrubbing and cleaning and turning the earth, digging down through the soil. It was her feet that were cracked and hard, years of shoes that didn't quite fit, pinching and slipping. Sometimes, when no one was looking, she would step out of them entirely and go barefoot, just for the steadiness of her own feet and nothing else to ground her.

It reminded her of Anna, somehow, until that thought hurt too much and she would march blindly across the forest floor so the crack and sting and sudden, twisting pain of a holly leaf embedded in the sole of her foot was enough to distract her.

 

\---

 

Prayers, chores, confession. 

"Bless me, Father, for I -"

"Now, Elsa, there's no need for that," and her head whipped up, her coif almost slipping. It was all shadows in each chamber, fine lattice work between them, but his eyes still shone far brighter than they should have. Perhaps there was a gap under the door on his side, light spilling in under it like smoke. 

"How - " she started, and almost choked on it. She pressed a hand to her mouth, cold fingers against warm lips. "How did you get in?"

"I was invited," he said. His expression was different in every gap in the screen.

He was wearing a cassock, and he looked so comfortable in it she assumed, for a dizzying moment, that he _was_ just a priest, that everything in the woods was just a bizarre little dream. That maybe some misplaced sense of humour had lead him to toy with her.

His accent was comfortingly familiar, now that she thought of it; she hadn't noticed it at all. Perhaps he had just found the lost princess by chance, and teased her instead of turning her in. It wasn't as though she had anything she could offer him for his silence. 

He _knew_ , though. She hadn't doubted that for a moment, not since his eyes raked from the top of her head to her toes and she'd flinched, like a thousand little hooks had sunk into her skin, and then he peeled it away. Her ice had roiled and scorched and twisted away as he looked at it, clear as the sun against her neck.

He had smiled, and she knew that he saw everything.

"Would you still like me to help you?" he asked, and the _yes_ was there, lined up neatly on her tongue.

She swallowed. 

"You know my name," she said, and bit down on the _how_ that wanted to strangle her. "What's yours?"

There was silence, and then, out of the darkness, quiet laughter. "Hans," he said, drawing it out like he was tasting it, finding the feel of it in his mouth like an old, long-forgotten language. "Yes, that's it. Hans."

"Hans," she repeated, and heard him shift. There was a shuffle of feet outside the confessional, leather soles slipping against the dusty stone. "I think that's all for today," she said, and left. 

The sun scattered through the chapel, and every sister kept her head down as Elsa walked past.

 

\---

 

No one called her your highness, or my lady, or your grace. No one bowed, or tried to trip her up, or gave her any less or any more work to do than all the other girls there, all heads bowed and eyes cast down.

They called her Sister Gerda, there, when she needed to be called by a name. She didn't know anything about any of the other girls. Maybe they were all cursed princesses, touched by demons in their mother's womb and sent to live far, far away from from their own kingdoms so they couldn't hurt anyone else.

The only thing she could remember from Arendelle without trying was the colour of her sister's hair, streaking with white.

 

\---

 

She must have fallen asleep - Hans was there, and she hadn't heard the door creak. 

He sat sideways in the chair by the desk, arm looped over the back as he watched her. It was the casualness that startled her, more than his unexplained presence - idleness and thoughtless gestures were forbidden. She couldn't remember the last time she saw someone lean against something, as though the strength of their own body wasn't all they ever needed to stay upright.

(She had seen girls collapse from that belief, the mind buckling just as easily as muscles in the heat.)

She didn't let _how_ anywhere near her throat. His eyes were bright, still, even as the moonlight only grazed the walls. The night air prickled, stiflingly hot against her cheeks, but under her blankets it was snowing.

"Why are you here?" she asked, and his teeth flashed.

"For you, Elsa," he said. "To do whatever I can."

"To help me?"

"Of course."

She pushed her blankets down, the cold fighting its way through her room, pushing out the heat. She sat up and crossed her legs, and watched the way his eyes flicked over her. Her knee was peeking out from under her nightgown.

"Where are you from?" she asked, and his gaze burnt its way up to hers.

"Oh, somewhere much further south than here," he said. Arendelle was to the north, she knew that much. All she knew about the convent was that it was surrounded by forest on all sides. She didn't know how far it went. She could only vaguely guess what country she has been living in for thirteen years, but that had never really mattered.

She didn't remember her home enough to miss it. 

"Will you let me help you?" Hans said, and something flickered in the darkness - just his hands, she realised, long and pale fingers clasping together. The heat was pushing back in, driving the cold back to hide under her bed.

"Yes," she said, but pulled back when he reached for her. 

He stood up, like that was what he meant to do all along. "You should sleep, Elsa," and perhaps she was more tired than she realised because she didn't hear him leave.

 

\---

 

(In her dreams she can see a hesitation before he crosses the ley line of the convent's boundary; a flinch when his heel is on one side and his toes on the other, a shiver when he's all the way across. He looks towards the tower, where the bell still quivers in the empty space.)

 

\---

 

Her nursemaid used to tell her stories, about the prince she might some day marry. Not all of them were nice. 

"There were some princes who slayed dragons, and some princes who married princesses, and some princes who sold their soul in order to become king -"

"What happened to them?" Elsa asked, quiet but urgent. It had seemed like the most important question in the world, then. She remembers the fire in the grate, and sitting on her hands so no one could see the frost creeping out from her fingertips. 

Her nursemaid has considered it for a while, her brows knitted together, before she finally answered. 

"I suppose they became no better than demons themselves."

 

\---

 

The second night, she locked her door and left the key on her desk.

"May I kiss your hand again?" Hans said, a moment after she found herself blinking into the darkness. She lifted her head and squinted down at him - he was beside her bed, kneeling as though in prayer. His elbows rested on her mattress, level with her hips. 

"No, she said, and kept everything under the blanket. Sleep stuck stubbornly to her eyelids, and if she was surprised to find him there it was buried somewhere deep, hiding under the heat. "Did you steal in here just to ask me that?"

"Perhaps," he said, and walked his fingers across the blanket until he found her wrist underneath it. The cold shrank back so suddenly she wondered, for a moment, if the bedcovers were actually there at all. 

Warmth flushed through her. She caught the glint of his smile in the darkness, his eyes bright, the tips of his fingers pinning the blanket over her arm, and bit her lip instead of telling him to leave. She didn't know if it was his voice or the heat or the way he was the only thing that made the ice in her veins recoil, but the fact that there was a strange man in her locked room didn't seem to matter at all. 

He smiled, like he knew what she was thinking. "Would you like me to stay?" he asked, and wrapped his hand over the shape of her arm.

"If you like," she said, and slipped her arm away. The sheets rustled as she pulled her hand out entirely and found his on top of the bedcovers, catching their fingers together because she wanted to see how far she could make the ice _run_.

Heat flickered through her veins, coiling and pooling somewhere in her middle, and Hans moved so quickly it was like there hadn't been a transitional stage at all - one moment on the floor and the next on her bed, knees either side of her thighs and their tangled fingers up on the pillow by her head, his hand pressing into hers. Her heart was suddenly pounding, and her ice - wasn't there.

"Good enough," he said, and kissed her, once, hard and closed mouthed before pulling away, quick enough that all she could think was _oh_. Everything was heat, and then he untangled their fingers and pulled her hand up, kissing the back of her knuckles like he was just proving that he could. 

 

\---

 

(In her dreams she's in the forest and his hand is outstretched, the curl of his fingers like he's avoiding touching something just at the edge of his reach.

You have to say yes, he says. Or I can't help.)

 

\---

 

She couldn't remember falling asleep, but she woke alone. The key was still on her desk. 

Prayers at first light, then chores, then prayers again. She saw him during the day. Or, no, rather - she saw red hair, black clothes, pale skin, always in the distance. Trying to catch a glimpse of him was like looking through a corn field in the wind. 

She didn't ask about him. No one mentioned him, all heads bowed and lips sealed as they scrubbed and cleaned and poured the dirty water over the plant beds. There could have been a whole flock of strange creatures in their walls and no one would raise their heads to look.

Perhaps, anywhere else, that might have been a bad thing.

 

\---

 

The third night, she locked the door and jammed the back of the chair under the handle. 

It hadn't moved an inch when she blinked awake and Hans was there, sitting on the edge of her bed, watching her. The air was heavy with the heat and a sweet scent, smoky, more like wood fire than the flicker of an oil lamp. 

She knew what he was, then. It was silly - something more like a magic trick being what it took to convince her he wasn't human. But, she knew magic, and she knew when it was just humans playing pretend, making you look the other way as they switched around machinery.

She could feel the dip of the mattress before the darkness coalesced into shapes, before she saw the glint of his eyes brighter than they should have been. Her throat was clear, and empty, and when she searched down for the surprise and the fear all she found was ice, twisting around her bones. 

"Ah," he said, and she saw his teeth. "Finally."

 

\---

 

"When an angel falls, they're reborn as a human. I was given one last chance. Not that it was fair, of course - there had to be a test. My crown had been taken from me but there was another, twelve heads in front of mine. I knew I was born to rule a kingdom. There was just _so much_ in my way," he said, and Elsa's hand twitched on the sheet, like she wanted to reach out over the empty inches between them. 

"Oh," he laughed. "I guess you know what that feels like."

(In her dreams, she thinks she can see the burnt edges where his grace used to be.)

 

\---

 

She kissed him just to shut him up, just to make the ice stop spitting from somewhere near her marrow, just to catch the words on his tongue to taste the truth of them - just because she wanted to, honestly, except now his mouth was on hers and everything had turned molten, a taste like burning incense on her tongue and his hands dragging heat over her skin. She had kissed him first but then, oh, his lips parted and suddenly she was flat on her back and his hand was curled around her neck, angling her mouth like an offering.

"Yes," she gasped, to whatever question his fingertips were tracing over her ribs, and he might have laughed as he pulled off her nightgown and tugged her up into his lap, his mouth somehow never leaving hers. He unravelled her braid as he pushed inside her, her fingertips digging into his shoulders, her body stringing like a bow as her hair spilled between his fingers and he _pulled_. 

He trailed a fingertip down the arch of her spine as he kissed her bared throat, except she could feel his teeth against her skin and she couldn't stop trembling. He held her up so she would watch the sinful obscenity of him slipping inside her, marvel at the correlation between the roll of his hips and the stretch inside her, pushing deeper.

There was fire in her veins where ice should be. She had never felt so aware of her own body before, even as everything narrowed to just the tightness of where her hips hit his, and he kissed her until she cried out and there was nothing but _heat_.

 

\---

 

It was light again when she woke up, and he was still there, taking up just enough space that there was no point along her side where they weren't touching. With his eyes closed he didn't look anything but human, except for how still he was - she watched, breath held, until she saw the rise of his chest, the barest hitch in his ribs. 

She had to leave for early morning prayers. Hardly paid attention to the words at all, her hands twisted in her lap, head bowed and eyes cast down. She hurried back to her room.

He was still there, turned so he was sprawled on his side. He looked asleep but his eyes flashed open as she shut the door behind her and he didn't move an inch, until the corner of his mouth and his fingers curled up, both beckoning.

She went.

 

\---

 

"You body isn't sacred," he said, and crooked his fingers inside her as though to prove it. "You're just flesh."

There was a mark on her stomach, red and shiny like a burn but it was just the blood rushing into a bruise and the trace of his salvia still on her skin. She had never felt so human as when she was caught between his thumb and two fingers like that.

His voice dripped over her like oil, making a path for the flames.

(If she isn't sacred then this isn't something profane. She doesn't feel defiled. She feels --)

 

\---

 

"I have to -" she said, gestured towards the door. He kissed the acre of skin between her breasts and her collarbone, his hand splayed so warm against her back.

She drifted through chores, prayers, chores - her hands as steady and sure as ever, but she didn't look at the scrubbing or the cleaning or the soil under her fingers. She forgot her shoes by the plant beds, padding barefoot across the grounds, the grass so dry under her soles like kindling. 

No one mentioned it. All heads bowed, leaning against the walls in the shade as the sun beat down.

 

\---

 

The fourth night the door was locked but the chair was back at her desk, and he was sitting at it when she awoke. The darkness pressed hot and heavy against her cheeks, sleep holding her down, the ice hiding somewhere under her bed. Just out of reach.

He smiled with the curl of his mouth, the crease of his eyes. But it was just that, no warmth, until she drew back the sheets. 

And then he was on her, his smile crashing hard into her mouth. 

 

\---

 

"Why," she asked, like she should have when the _how_ kept sticking her throat like a warning. He pressed his hand against hers, linking their fingers. Pale skin impossibly bright in the darkness.

"I made a deal with a lonely princess who wanted her sister back," he said, and the ice lingered in her bones, unhidden and waiting. No one had ever come for her when she begged them to take her powers away.

"Do you want me to help you?" he asked, a third time.

"Yes," she said. "Please," she said, because she was raised to be a queen, and queens are polite even to demons who were once kings, to kings who were once angels. 

 

\---

 

That summer was so dry even the stones became like tinder, they said, later, as the convent smouldered in the middle of the forest.

(The snow blows in early, that year, and covers everything like a grave.

 

-

 

Smoke blackens the sky like a storm. 

Anna, she says.)

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine Hans was a [Principality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_angelic_hierarchy#Principalities_or_Rulers) before he fell.


End file.
